


Laws of Gravity need not apply

by Yuu_chi



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst and Humor, M/M, Pining, Very liberal take on the team's bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-26 11:55:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7573159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuu_chi/pseuds/Yuu_chi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a difficult thing to go from secretly crushing on your school rival at a distance to sharing a tentative psychic connection with him, an audience of three other people, and an assorted collection of sentient machines. </p><p>Harder still to watch that crush come to be something <i>more<i>.</i></i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The thing is, Lance has liked Keith from pretty much the word _go_.

It’s - Lance is only human, okay? Keith is attractive and smart and yeah, kind of a dick, and that had been a little off putting at first but had gradually become endearing somewhere along the way. Keith is the kind of person that people write entire stories about, placing extra careful emphasis on his thoughtlessly attractive cheekbones and the length of his eyelashes.

Back before Keith had dropped out, half the school had been crushing on him. Lance knows this as fact because he has very distinct memories of staring longingly at Keith across the classroom only to realize every girl sitting in his row was doing the same thing.

Lance honestly thinks it’d take a stronger kind of person _not_ to crush on Keith. And he’s not - strong, that is. Not really. Not once you look past his combat scores and space training.

So yeah, Keith. Lance has been crazy over him since the first time their eyes met. The thing is though - the real fucking kicker of the _thing -_ is that crushing on a vaguely unattainable someone from a distance and crushing on a close friend and teammate?

_Are really fucking different things._

It’s tolerable at first. Embarrassing as fuck, but Lance has a long extensive history of embarrassing himself, so you know, he can work with that.

Like, when they’re on a planet with functioning water and Keith is coming out of the shower as Lance is heading in, towel around his waist, another at his neck as he scrubs his hair dry, unconcerned with the way Lance starts stuttering and backing up like Keith is dripping something particularly radioactive and dangerous.

“Oh,” Keith says, all casual like, not quite smiling but lighting up a little at the eyes. He stills the towel, his hair curling up at the nape of his damp neck, skin flushed from heat. “Lance. Hi.”

He looks warm, cozy and terrifyingly naked.

“Yes,” Lance says thickly, eyes stuck at the small crinkle between Keith’s brows because it seems like the only safe space to be looking right now. “Yes, I mean, hi, I - shower?”

( _\- and oh god, the water rolling down Keith’s collarbone, his chest, down, down, down, and -)_

“Lance?” Keith says, again, and the upwards tick at the end tells Lance it’s not the first time he’s said it. Lance’s eyes snap up and he hadn’t even realized they’d left their safe spot on Keith’s forehead. “Are you okay?”

“Am I okay?” Lance repeats blankly, finally catching sight of Keith’s slightly concerned gaze. “Oh. No, I’m - you get out, will you? Stop hogging the bathroom.”

He pushes past Keith, shoulders brushing together, and makes sure to lock the door behind himself.

His shower after that is long, cold and guiltily miserable.

But, you know, whatever.

 _Tolerable_.

It’s less tolerable the first time Keith gets injured, _really_ injured, blood on his face and finger, shoulders that shake and shudder beneath the weight of every breath he forces down, the whole nine yards.

They’re on the ship, Lance dragging Keith to a healing pod even as Keith staggers and nearly pulls them both down to the floor. While he’s usually pale he’s now sheet-white and the blood is an angry, vicious red; white and red, white and red, white and _red_.

And still, when Keith realizes where Lance is taking him he says, “what about the others?”

It’s then, with Keith all but dying in his arms and still worrying about the team, that Lance has the kick-to-the-gut realization that things might be worse than he thought, that he might have left ‘tolerable’ behind at least three battles ago now.

Keith goes into the healing pod, and when the team come back from battle, a little bruised but nowhere near as worse for wear as Keith had been, Lance goes to his room, gingerly climbs into his bunk, and screams soundlessly into his pillow for what feels like an age.

It’s a shitty realization to have a million lightyears from home with the fate of the universe riding solidly on his shoulders, but Lance may be a little bit gone on Keith.

A little - a little _more_.

 _More_ than sneaky classroom side glances and poking and prodding at Keith to get his attention. _More_ than sitting side by side for team dinners and always having one another’s back out on the field.

 _More_ than having that tiny blip of a crush every functioning being with a brain has.

And Lance isn’t - he doesn’t - tolerable had barely _been_ tolerable. How the flying fuck is he meant to handle _more_?

The answer to that, as it turns out, is _badly_.

When it comes to Voltron and the lions, there’s a … _thing_ that the whole team doesn’t talk about but all sort of silently acknowledge; because occasionally being psychically connected to four other people and an assorted collection of semi-sentient machines is awkward enough for everybody involved without trying to _verbalize_ it.

Most of the time it’s not really a problem. When they’re connected they’re usually in the middle of battle, and it’s not really the time to get side-tracked on the careless thoughts that fly from one person to the next through whatever thin cosmic thread is hooking their brains all together.

Sometimes Lance might get a flicker of annoyance from Pidge as the battle drags on, a small burst of a grumbling stomach that echoes down into his own gut from Hunk. A spark of impatient irritation from Keith, a patient fondness from Shiro when the team manage to coordinate Voltron just right.

But rarely much, and never more than the unquashable subconscious urges.

Even for Lance, who is an _excellent_ multitasker, there’s not really much time for aimless angsting about Keith when there are Galra soldiers trying to sink him in the sky.

After Lance’s realization though, the thought seems to _always be there_. Just - _lurking_. Waiting until Lance has his guard down, thinking he’s quietly content doing one thing or another - annoying Pidge over their electronics, sharing a respectful silence with Shiro - and then it’ll ram him upside the brain.

An unending chorus of; _you’re in love with Keith and he’ll probably never feel anything more than grudging tolerance for you_.

On the worse days it’s gets the added cherry on top of; _if he ever finds out how you feel you’ll tear this whole fucking team apart because you didn’t know how to keep your damn mouth shut._

Yeah. It’s not a particularly cheerful time inside Lance’s head lately.

For the most part though, it’s not something he worries about getting out to the others. Through the mystic bond anyway. The thoughts are too complex, patterned and worded in a way the lions and Voltron aren’t really equipped to translate.

And life-and-death fighting is a really great distraction.

The thing is though, that life-and-death fighting, while a great distraction, isn’t what you’d call constantly reliable.

In the end, it’s the damn fighting that ruins it all.

They’re mid-battle on the edge of some godforsaken galaxy system that is eighty per cent rocks and exactly zero percent breathing room. Galra soldiers are _everywhere_. Lance can’t so much as spin Blue around without finding a whole new fleet at his tail.

They can’t even form Voltron because any time they try to get close to one another a burst of fire forces them back.

Somewhere out there is Allura and the ship, but they’re slow coming, and Lance doesn’t really think they can hold out long enough for it.

It’s an all-around miserable time. The bond between them is fraught with anxious worry, terror, and resignation. The sheer intensity of the moment, the lot of them exhausted and frightened all at once, has pushed their psychic bond up several notches and Lance can almost swear he feels five hearts beating in his chest instead of one.

“Stay calm, team,” Shiro says, for what seems like the fifth time in as many minutes. His voice is thin in a way Lance wishes he wasn’t so familiar with.

“We are calm,” Hunk shoots back. “There’s only so much scary shooting you can take before you have to resign yourself to your inevitable demise.”

“Nobody is dying,” Keith says, and his voice is as sharp as his blade.

Lance wants to agree with him, but he looks out at the pulsing pink that seems to fill up most of the sky and he _can’t_. “Keith,” he says tiredly.

 _“Nobody is dying,_ ” Keith insists again, and a burst of protective fury almost knocks Lance from his seat, hot and angry.

“Nobody is trying to,” Shiro says, but it’s more to sooth Keith than it is to be genuine and they can all feel it. The kindle Keith had left blazing in Lance’s chest flares higher so it almost chokes him with the smoke of desperate, possessive, fear.

For Keith who had no family, who had lived alone in a shack at the edge of a desert, their little team had become his whole world. For Keith, who was more instinct than he was reason, could not possibly bring himself to do a single thing halfway, the idea of losing a single one of them was positively debilitating.

Keith had never had to learn temperance and so he hadn’t.

“We might not be trying to,” Pidge says, “but I don’t see another way out of here.”

Neither does Lance. Never has a sky full of pink ever been so frightening. His mother will never know what happened to him. He’d always hoped to get back to her one day, tell her of the amazing places he’d seen, the people he’d met, the things he’d done.

But, he thinks, there are worse ways to go then among a family closer to him than blood has ever wrought; he’d die for these people in a heartbeat if he thought for a second it’d get them free.

He doesn’t realize how much of that sad longing has flickered out across the bond, broadcasting to the other lions, until he hears Keith’s sharp intake of breath. It’s a distinctive sound that Lance has committed to memory long ago.

“Lance,” Shiro says, too quiet, their fearless leader, but whatever else he says is lost because all of a sudden there’s a roar so loud that the electronics in Blue frizz out for a second.

When they come back Lance’s heart doesn’t so much as sink as it does freeze in place.

Across the crowded stars Keith is dashing forward, Red jumping from ship to ship; destroying Galra soldiers easily with each dash, but taking enough fire that the sparks crackling along his lion are visible.

“What’s he doing?” Pidge shouts, tinny over the speakers, or maybe under the too loud rush of Lance’s blood. “ _What is he doing!”_

Pidge doesn’t _say_ “ _that crazy suicidal fool”_ but Lance _feels_ it.

Shiro swears, something vicious and low, but even as he starts to give chase Lance can see _exactly_ what Keith is doing.

Where before there had been nothing but solid pink sky there is now a cut of clear blackness and stars; an escape route that the lot of them could take if they left behind Keith to hold the way, distract the forces with destruction.

“Oh you fucking _bastard,”_ Lance hisses, and the anger that crashes through him is only dwarfed by the paralysing _fear_.

Different from before; where it had been a natural culminating understanding of the situation, it is now the overwhelming ice cold realization that the guy that Lance is maybe a little in love with is throwing himself to the wolves because he’d rather _die_ than lose his friends.

And Lance has never once thought of telling Keith that, just what his existence means to Lance, and so he doesn’t think anything so stupid as _don’t die before I get to tell you how I feel -_ instead he thinks _don’t you dare die and leave me alone to be crushed under the weight of all the stupid things I’m never going to be able to tell you_.

He doesn’t even realize he’s moving until he hears Shiro yelling at him through the coms, Pidge and Hunk just beyond him, but it’s not a conscious choice, nothing Lance told his hands to do, just Blue moving on pure instinct and even if Lance wanted to he doesn’t think he could stop.

In his head there’s a voice saying _you’re in love with Keith and he’ll probably never feel anything more than grudging tolerance for you_.

There’s another voice, louder though, saying _Keith will live if I have to die for it._

And everything else Lance has thought has been too big for words maybe, but the emotion in that last one trembles right down into his very bones, resounds out, echoes off into a very specific direction and _connects_.

Lance can feel it in a way he never has before; Keith’s surprise total and consuming, something else indistinct at the edges, but too caught off guard and shaken for Lance to pull into focus.

He sees, though, the way Red has frozen beneath Keith’s shock, and he sees a Galra ship in position to completely take him out, an ion laser powering up and everything.

Keith’s still frozen, it’s barely been a second since Lance had hit him out of the blue with _everything,_ but on the battlefield a second is all it takes to lose the breath in your lungs.

“ _Lance don’t you even -.”_ Shiro shouts.

Lance doesn’t think, pulls Blue forward and slams into Keith with the full weight of his lion, sending Keith spiralling away.

The laser whirs - something bright, endless and terrifying barrels at him.

Keith’s voice, in his head more than it is in the coms, shrieking, “ _Lance -.”_

As far as the last words Lance will ever hear goes, he thinks he can be content with that.

The laser hits.

Dying is a _little_ more painful than Lance had thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i asked a friend if she thought this was a bad place to end a chapter and she said, and i quote, "Nah that's fine for your angst lovin ass".


	2. Chapter 2

Lance wakes up.

This is notable mostly because it’s terrifyingly unexpected. One moment he can see nothing but pure white, feel his bones quaking beneath his skin, and the next he’s opening his eyes to the blue shimmer of a healing pod.

His first thought is _oh fuck_ because if _he_ lived had that meant Keith had -

“Lance!” Hunk cries, and Lance staggers forward on unsteady legs, collapsing out of the pod and onto Hunk’s barrel chest like it’s the only thing keeping him from making great friends with the floor (it is).

There’s a cacophony of noise that hurts Lance’s ears and it takes several blinks for the room to resolve itself.

Hunk is there obviously, Shiro and Pidge too; Pidge clamouring over Hunk’s back to get to Lance like they can’t believe Lance is really there until they get him underneath their fingertips to feel the life in his skin.

Keith isn’t there. Lance’s heart lurches.

“Huh,” Lance says, which hadn’t been what he’d been trying to say but his vocal cords are strangely rusty. He clears his throat, claws his way upright using Hunk’s shoulders to keep balance and manages, “ _Keith?”_

Shiro blinks at him for a second, one hand reaching for Lance before his face clears in understanding. He claps his hand down on Lance’s back and pries him loose from Hunk’s exuberant hug. Lance goes gratefully.

“He’s fine,” Shiro says soothingly, squeezing Lance’s shoulder a little. “He’s fine, Lance. He’s out with Coran looking at the lions right now; we practically had to pry him away, but he needed a distraction or he was going to drive all of us insane.”

The relief that crashes down on Lance then is the heaviest, most beautiful thing he has ever felt. He sags a little, sinks his head down against Shiro’s chest and lets out a breath that had been caught somewhere between his lungs and his throat since he’d opened his eyes.

“How are you feeling?” Pidge presses, and their tiny hands land on Lance’s arm, turning it around so they can get their fingers to the pulse point in his wrist. “Tired? Unsteady? Any pain?”

“Since when were you the team doctor?” Lance asks, smiling just a little but letting Pidge have their way. “And I feel - fine, I guess. More tired than the last time I did this maybe, but you know, not like I just took a laser to the face.” Something occurs to him then and his head snaps around to look at Hunk. “Is Blue…?”

Hunk winces. “Blue’s - well, a little worse for wear than you, but functional. We’re working on him. Well, Coran mostly, since you know, he knows the most about this stuff. But Blue will be fine, Lance. Coran says the lions require some upkeep and maintenance but they’re also pretty capable of doing some weird machine-equivalent to healing. I didn’t get much of the details. It’s seriously freaky.”

Keith is fine. Blue is fine. Lance is fine. It’s better odds than Lance thought was going to come out of this. There’s a stiffness in his back, and blinding relief on the face of his team, and a whole lot of _something_ that’ll need to be talked about soon, but they’re all alive and Lance is a simple guy, really, so he can’t bring himself to be anything but overwhelmingly thankful and just a little happy.

“Damn,” he says, straightening up a little and taking his weight off Shiro who has very patiently been holding him up. “I’m _good_.”

Pidge snorts and then punches him hard enough in the arm that it goes dead instantly.

“Ow! Jesus Christ! _Pidge_ -.”

“We were worried, you asshole,” Pidge says, and they sounds furious but their lower lip trembles and Lance is on guard instantly because _nobody_ in the team likes to be the one to make Pidge cry. It doesn’t happen often, Hunk is the crier of the team really, but Pidge’s tears are _powerful._ “When we first got back Allura and Coran weren’t sure you were going to wake up.”

Oh.

“Well,” Lance says carefully, trying his hardest not to be the one to finally trigger Pidge’s waterworks. He looks over to Shiro for help but he holds his palms up, staying out of it, the traitor. He looks back to Pidge. “I mean - I did?”

Pidge’s frown deepens but their lip stops trembling. “Yeah, after _two weeks_.”

 _Oh_.

 _"Two weeks?”_ Lance repeats, voice higher than he’s proud of.

“Yeah,” Pidge says, and they punch Lance’s other arm, but it’s softer this time so Lance supposes he must be forgiven. “You can see why it might have been a little stressful. And _Keith_ -.”

“Pidge,” Shiro says quietly, cutting over them. Pidge’s mouth immediately jams shut.

Lance’s heart stutters.

He thinks, then, in a blur of shaky memory, of those last few seconds in the lions where Lance’s fierce, panicked feelings had hit Keith with all the subtlety of a bomb blast.

He looks between Pidge and Shiro. “What about Keith?”

Hunk says instead, “dude, he’s been _glued_ here. The first week he didn’t leave your side for more than five minutes at a time. Wouldn’t even clean himself up. He was really starting to stink up the place, I tell you. It was a little off putting.”

“Hunk,” Shiro warns.

“The only reason he’s not here now is Coran’s taken on acting as a distraction to get him to stop moping about like the world's about to end. Keith’s been more obsessed with repairing Blue than you probably will be.”

“ _Hunk_.”

“What?” Hunk asks, throwing his hands in the air. “I’d want to know if one of you guys camped outside of my pod like that, okay?”

Shiro sighs and puts a palm to his face. “This is really between Lance and Keith, okay?”

Lance’s stomach turns and he comes to the uncomfortable realization that while the rest of the team may not have got the crystal clear broadcast that Keith had, they knew that _something_ had happened in those last few moments before Lance had thrown Keith out of the way of the laser.

His mouth is dry when he says, “yeah, okay. I’ll - I’ll talk to Keith later.”

Pidge gives him a pityingly amused look. “I don’t think you’d have a choice on the matter anyway. The second Keith finds out you’re awake he’s probably going to want to hold a convention or something.”

Lance imagines it; Keith, storming into his room furious and unstoppable, shaking Lance about the shoulders, demanding answers or worse yet, demanding silence. Keith saying _how could you dump that on me and then take the easy way out_ and then saying _I don’t want you anywhere near my head ever again_.

Lance knows, logically, that after two weeks stuck in a healing pod he can’t _really_ be sick, but he feels it right down to his gut.

“You know what?” He says. “This whole two weeks of brain death thing has left me kind of exhausted, so I’m gonna head back to my room, you know?” It’s not a lie either; he’s _way_ more tired than he’d been last time he’d been stuck in there. “That cool?”

“You just woke up!” Hunk protests. “At least let us feed you or -.”

“That’s fine Lance,” Shiro says, sending a significant glance to Hunk from the corner of his eye. “Get some rest. We can catch each other up soon enough. We’re just glad to have you back.”

“Yeah,” Pidge says, “and I’m betting calming Keith down will take a lot out of you.”

“ _Pidge_.”

Pidge shrugs at Shiro’s tone, unbothered.

“Thanks guys,” Lance says, and the smile he gives them this time feels more genuine if not just as exhausted.

He collects another hug from Hunk on the way out and a soothing arm pat from Pidge right over the bruise they’d left him. Shiro stands back and watches him go, but Lance has a feeling that Shiro will probably be getting the ship to read him Lance’s vitals for the next several hours.

Walking down the ship hallway is disorientating when Lance had been fairly certain he’d never see it again and his room is just as he left it; bed a mess, unused gear piled in a corner, wallet-sized photo of his family taped on the wall by the door.

Somebody had cleaned off his amour and stacked it neatly beside the bed and he tries not to think about who had sat down and scrubbed it free of blood and left it here for him like a promise to themselves that Lance would return to appreciate it.

He touches the photo lightly as he passes it by and settles on the edge of his bed.

He could sleep like this, worry or not, but he thinks it’d be best to be awake and aware when Keith arrives, for both of them.

He doesn’t wait long. Footsteps clang out in the hall, loud the way Keith only ever is when he’s too mad to make the most of his not inconsiderable training. Lance doesn’t think too hard about that.

Lances takes a breath, smooths his shaking hands against his shirt, and gets to his feet.

The doors to his room open loudly and Lance looks up as calmly as he can as Keith storms in.

He looks - well, in a word, _awful_.

His hair is in his face, damp and suspiciously greasy looking, and his eyes are dark rimmed against the pale of his skin. There’s a frantic look on his face that Lance doesn’t think he’s ever really seen before and he’s strolling forward, hands balled into fists at his side.

“Keith,” Lance starts to say, but then Keith is there, in his space, hands fisting in Lance’s shirt and dragging him forward. Up close like this the look in his eyes is positively manic.

Lance’s heart stutters and he prepares himself to be punched.

Instead Keith’s forehead hits his chest, and it’s not a hug, not with Lance frozen and his hands helplessly hung at his side, but Keith doesn’t seem to be looking for anything in particular. His breath is like fire on Lance’s too warm skin, and when Lance tentatively raises a hand to set on his shoulder Keith does a full body shudder beneath his fingertips.

“You’re awake,” Keith says, obviously, and it should be funny, saying it like that when Lance is very clearly aware and on two feet, but it doesn’t so much sound like he’s talking to Lance as he is trying to convince himself of something. The fingers in his shirt tighten further, pull him in closer, Keith’s hair brushing at the crook between Lance’s shoulder and his neck. “You’re… _awake.”_

Keith says ‘awake’ like some might say ‘ _alive_ ’.

Nothing in Lance has prepared him for this sort of reunion.

“Yeah buddy, I decided to stick around after all,” Lance says, and he tries to keep it light but there’s something sticky in his chest that bogs his voice down. He clears his throat, pats Keith’s shoulder awkwardly, quietly terrified and short circuiting a little from all the sweaty, full body contact.

Keith shows no inclination of moving. His shoulders are loosening up a little in Lance’s grip, but his breathing is still alarmingly tight.

Lance doesn’t think he’s ever been this close to Keith without one or both of them on the verge of death.

Keith doesn’t raise his face when he says, “I am _so mad at you.”_

Lance’s mouth goes very dry. Carefully he says, “well, I mean, that’s not _that_ unusual.”

Keith snorts. Lance can feel it against his skin. It should be very gross. (it’s not.)

“It is,” Keith says. “Believe me, _it is_.”

Lance’s fumbling reserves of words are running dry and Keith is still clinging to him like at any moment Lance’s feet might unstick from the ground and he’ll float off into space and get lost amongst the stars. “Sorry?” He tries warily.

Keith’s grip in his shirt tightens again, warningly. Lance is a little amazed his shirt isn’t ripping. He can actually feel Keith’s fingernails nicking at his skin where the collar has been irredeemably stretched.

“God, don’t apologize,” Keith says, and it sounds like less like ‘ _you have nothing to be sorry for_ ’ and a hell of a lot more like ‘ _you apologizing is weirding me out’_. The shudder he gives reinforces that. Lance wonders for a moment if he should be offended.

Finally though, Keith pulls back. Not enough for Lance’s frazzled heart, but enough that they can look each other in the eye, enough that Keith’s breath is no longer warming Lance’s throat.

Lance _still_ has no idea what to say. In all of his projections for this moment he’d managed to flick through on his way back from the healing pod, this had never come up.

He doesn’t even know what Keith is this upset about, not really.

The silence between them has stretched too long. Lance flounders around for a second and rustles up a practised smile to slap on. “I didn’t mean to leave you with all the guilt if something happened to me because I was saving your stupid, suicidal ass,” he says, and he means it as a joke, really, but the honesty in it sticks out sorely.

(and it is honesty, because what else would Keith be this upset about if not the guilt of Lance dying to save him on his conscious? Lance, dumping all of his stupid, possessive issues on Keith and then kicking the bucket and leaving him without any kind of resolution.

Lance has three younger siblings, okay, he knows just how strong a motivator guilt can be.)

Keith’s face does a … _thing._ Lance really can’t describe it, because it requires either past precedence (which there is not) or an adherence to regular emotional expression (of which Keith does not.)

“Lance,” Keith says, and one of the hands leaves the death grip on his shirt to rest on his face, and shit, oh shit, Lance can’t even _breathe_ right now. “If you _ever_ try something that dumb again, Galra will be the least of your worries.”

His tone doesn’t necessarily _sound_ threatening, still soft and obscenely lovely to Lance’s ears, but he can _feel_ the honest danger in those words right down to his gut.

Still, with Keith’s fingertips set against his cheek like they are, Keith could ask him to jump out the airlock and Lance probably would.

(he made peace with the effect Keith had on him long ago.)

“Okay,” Lance says, stupidly.

The creases at the corner of Keith’s eyes deepen. He doesn’t look any happier. “I…” he starts to say. Then, “Lance, do you…” He trails off again, makes a frustrated noise, then says, “Do you understand, Lance? _You can’t do that again_.”

 _The dying_ , Lance thinks, _or the shouldering you with the full psychic weight of the intensity of my feelings for you?_

He doesn’t ask though. If Keith isn’t bringing it up, Lance won’t be the first.

“I get you Keith,” he says, smiling thinly. “No dying. I mean, given the whole space war thing I really can’t promise anything, but I’ll try my hardest man.”

“For me,” Keith clarifies.

“What?”

“No dying for me,” Keith says. His fingers fall from Lance’s cheek. He misses their warmth immediately. “Believe me, if I thought I could get you to promise no dying _period_ , I’d try, but - well, you know.” His eyes land back on Lance’s and they look viciously fierce. “But I _can_ make you promise to never try and trade my life for your own ever again.”

Lance stares at him blankly. He wonders how Keith can think that’s a real possibility _ever_ with the way that thought had echoed and bounced between them out on the field. It’s always hazy to recall the intensity of a moment after it’s passed, but if Keith had felt even a fraction of how Lance feels about him on a daily basis, he _must_ know that it’s a trade Lance would make ten times over if he had to.

Like this though, there’s no psychic connection between them, nothing to give Lance away in a lie, and Keith looks rooted to the floor, something quietly urgent in his eyes, and Lance says, “sure.”

Keith studies him. Lance stares back.

Finally, Keith sighs, steps back and offers him one of his small, slightly off-centred smiles. The heaviness that had been between them breaks. “It’s good to see you on your feet.”

Lance breathes out, smiles back, and says, “well, I don’t know how long that’ll be for. Turns out space comas really take a lot out of you. Who knew, hey?”

Keith snorts. “Wouldn’t be the first time you slept the day away.”

“We’re in space, dude. What even counts as a ‘day’ anymore? There’s no sun for miles around, you can’t shame me for anything out here.”

Keith doesn’t laugh and he still looks absolutely wretched in a way that only a good shower and a steady night of sleep will fix but the corner of his mouth twitches just a little. “What do you know about the nearest sun?” He says without bite. “But I’ll leave you alone for now. Let you get your - beauty rest, or whatever it is you call it.”

“It’s beauty _sleep_ ,” Lance corrects automatically, but he can’t help but stick on the little _for now_ Keith had dropped.

He might think it was a generic, end-of-day farewell if not for the fact there’s still something in Keith that seems unsettled and unsatisfied. If not for the fact that even if Lance would give his left arm to ignore the big, psychic elephant in the room, he’s pretty sure it won’t just go away.

“ _Goodbye_ Lance,” Keith says, but he makes no move to go, just stands in the middle of Lance’s room and continues to look at him.

Lance shifts uncomfortably. “You get some sleep too, okay? You look like shit.”

Keith blinks in surprise, runs a hand through his hair and frowns at what Lance figures must be an unseemly amount of grease. He looks like he hadn’t even noticed. Lance wishes he didn’t find that a little endearing.

“Hey,” he says before he can think better of it. “Hunk told me about - well, you waiting with me. And I just - wanted to thank you, I guess.”

Keith’s eyes flick back to him. “You want to thank me for spending time with you? You normally can’t wait to get rid of me,” he says dubiously.

Lance winces. “Well, when you put it like that you just make me seem like an asshole.”

(it’s also very obviously untrue, but he thinks Keith knows that. The both of them fight more out of familiarity than real venom these days.)

“You _are_ an asshole,” Keith says, and it’s back on familiar footing, so _them_ , that it finally seems to give Keith the out he was looking for. He turns to leave, heading for the hall.

The doors to his room open at Keith’s approach and Lance says, before he can think better of it, “I’ll see you soon, Keith.”

Keith pauses at the threshold, throws a look over his shoulder at Lance. He’s silent for a second before he says, “yeah. I’ll see you soon. Sleep well, Lance.”  

He leaves.

Lance takes the few steps over to his bunk and sinks down. Too hard bunk, scraggly blankets - awful and comforting all at once. He tips sideways and lets his head hit the pillow.

So Keith doesn’t seem to hate him, doesn’t want him gone. That’s - well, a relief.

Everybody’s alive and nobody hates anybody. It’s so much more than Lance ever expected that for a second he plays with the idea that he might be dead after all.

He discards it though. Keith’s breath on his throat, hands on his chest, fingers against his cheek - Lance would never be able to make up the way that felt.

And for everything else?

He has _for now_ and _see you soon_.

And Lance doesn’t know if that’s good or bad or anything, but right now he’s _tired_ and there’s still the lingering touch of Keith on his skin.

He takes it with him into his dreams, that touch, and when he wakes he only feels a _little_ guilty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so yeah. this was meant to be the final part, but words take up more space than anticipated so this is gonna have 3 chapters instead. my bad.
> 
> and thank you! so! much! so many lovely comments, so many, i can't possibly explain what it means. when writing ongoing fics comments are the life force that lets you know, yes, it is worth it. i hope this made up a little for the pain of the end of the first part where you were all yelling at me (which i deserved). 
> 
> you can find me on tumblr as glenflower!


	3. Chapter 3

A week passes.

The team doesn’t treat him any different, doesn’t coddle him or hold him back from training, because at this point the lot of them have been in and out of a healing pod enough to believe him when he says he’s fine.

It’s not a lie either. Lance feels fine. He _is_ fine. He’s up and on two legs and nothing _physical_ aches.  

There isn’t really much that advanced alien tech can’t heal - when it comes to the body, anyway.

When it comes to matters of the mind or the heart Lance figures it’s a little more complicated than that. Mostly because since the blowout and Keith’s visit he’s felt like he’s choking on something anytime they’re in the same room for more than ten minutes. Words, probably. All those little things he knows they really should talk about but Lance is too much of a coward to bring up.

Keith isn’t doing much better. He looks at Lance sometimes, opens his mouth, and then closes it again, turning around with an intensely frustrated look on his face. Lance is intimately familiar with being the cause of Keith’s frustration at this point, so he’d thought it’d proceed as usual - Keith avoiding him, him avoiding Keith, the both of them pretending nothing had happened until the weirdness faded away.

Except Keith is never very good at sticking to the script, and Lance has increasingly spent his day ducking out of a room as Keith walks in, rounding a corner only to nearly run smack bang into him and being forced to do an about face and run away because Keith looks like he’s about to _say_ something.

Honestly, it’s not good for Lance’s heart. He doesn’t know why Keith needs to keep pushing it like this, because given enough time anything will fade. Well, maybe not _anything_ \- his feelings being chief among the permanent sort of things he wishes would just _vanish_ \- but the awkwardness, the tension between them.

And until then Lance has maybe taken to hiding out in his room.

He’s not proud of it exactly, but it’s not the greatest hardship out there. It gives him time to catch up on things and thinking space outside of Keith.

There’s a small box beneath Lance’s bed that holds letters to his family. He thinks at this point he might have a hundred of them, scarcity of paper in deep space be damned.

He knows it’s pointless, a little childish really, but Lance has a big family and he loves them dearly, and it doesn’t mean he cares about the team - his _other_ family - any less, just that there are some things, he finds, that you never grow out of wanting to tell your mother.

(the others know about Lance’s strange coping mechanism, because it’s hard to hide anything on this ship, but they’ve been good about pretending they don’t.)

It’s been quiet lately in the wake of the almost-tragedy, and Lance has taken the evening to huddle up in his room, paper on his knees and a pen in his hand, and ready to add another slip to the ever growing pile.

He’s having more trouble than he really thinks he should. It’s turning out impossible to try and convey on paper the kind of week he’s been having without sounding half desperate, half crazy, or an unpleasant mix of both.

_Hey Mom, so I nearly died the other week, and it’s just as terrifying as you’d think -_

_Hey Mom, okay, so I might be about to set myself up for heartbreak but -_

_Hey Mom, I may have telepathically broadcast my deepest, darkest feelings to my arch rival and unrequited love -_

Yeah.  Lance isn’t really having that much luck. He’s on his third draft already and he knows none of them are going to be making it into the box.

He’s just bunched up another letter and thrown it over his shoulder when his door rattles open. He looks up, annoyed, only to do a double take.

“Lance,” Keith says, and he’s wearing an expression that is probably meant to be reassuring but looks like he’s about to go to war. Lance has seen him go to war. He knows that face.

“Keith,” he says, getting to his feet in a rush. “Is everything okay?”

Keith rockets to a bit of a standstill, frowning. “Is everything -.” He clicks. “ _Oh,_ no _._ No. Everything is fine.” He thinks for a second. “As fine as it ever is, I mean.”

Lance lets out a breath and relaxes, hand to his chest. “Jesus Christ, Keith. Don’t _do_ that. I thought the ship was swarming with Galra soldiers or something, you storming in here looking like that.”

Keith stares at him blankly for a second, and then makes a clearly concentrated effort to fix his face into something less frightening. It doesn’t work, really, but Lance is a little amused at the effort. “Sorry,” Keith says, which is, okay, yeah, weird. Lance doesn’t know if Keith has ever apologised to him without blood on their hands.

“Okay,” Lance says, slowly, a little concerned.

Keith looks at him, stuffs his hands in his pockets awkwardly and rocks back on his heels. It’s a superbly self-conscious gesture.

Keith feels awkward, then. Lance can appreciate that.

It’s the first time they’ve been alone like this since, well, _the thing_.

Lance’s fault, he knows. He weighs up the benefits of faking an emergency to get past Keith but decides there’s no real way to flee from his own room that won’t immediately seem suspicious.

“What did you need Keith?” Lance asks when it becomes apparent that Keith seems content to just stand there and stare at him for as long as allowed.

“Come train with me,” Keith says.

Lance frowns. “Train with you?”

Keith’s lips curl. “I know you’re not deaf, Lance.”

It should be alarming the way Keith’s abrupt rudeness calms something in Lance, but Lance is too unsettled for that. He’ll take whatever shred of normality, of balance, Keith throws his way right now.

“Don’t be an ass,” he says automatically, and then, “sure, I mean, I guess I can train, so long as the others are cool with it.”

“No,” Keith says, and his words trip out of his mouth like they’re in a rush. “I didn’t - just us.”

Lance stares. “Oh.”

It’s not that they never train together, exactly, just that it’s never really been a thing they plan; just stumble into the training room upon one another and decide to make a good go at it between them.

Asking one another, planning for it, would have been an admittance that they don’t find one another nearly as off putting as they pretend they do. It would have put them dangerously close to a line that Lance has very clearly been working to keep off the table.

It really shouldn’t surprise him that Keith decides to trample over it like this, then. Keith does live to aggravate every one of Lance’s careful (and not so careful) plans.

Keith’s brow raises at him and Lance tries for words.

“Yeah - I mean, that’s cool. Alone. Together. Whatever. We can do that.”

Keith’s lips curl again, but this time it’s more smile than disdain. Beneath the forced put-upon look he glues to his face whenever he so much as sees Lance coming is something that seems quietly pleased.

It gives Lance a little case of heartburn. Keith is nowhere near as mysterious as he thinks he is, and the whole team, possibly the whole world, can see through whatever casually affronted mask he tries to wear.

“Now?” Keith asks, maybe a bit too eagerly to be entirely casual, still rocking back on his feet.

Lance glances down at the barely started letter and then remembers he’s not exactly in a rush here. “Sure,” he says, and when he tucks it under his pillow Keith tactfully pretends he doesn’t know what it is.

Lance’s team is good like that.

He follows Keith out into the hall and tries not to look anything but his usual cocky, arrogant self as they head towards the training room.

He can do this, he really can. It’s been long enough that he really should be trying to work past this avoiding thing. This is a good opportunity, good practice. Nothing quite like sweatily throwing himself at Keith to remember his painful and unrequited attraction.

It’ll give him back a sense of equilibrium at least.

They get to the training room, and Lance is surprised first off to see that it’s barely lit. He hadn’t even known the lights had a dimmer. Trust Keith to figure it out.

Second, that instead of stripping off his jacket and heading right into his stretches that Keith instead crosses the room to one of the wall mounted benches. Lance raises his eyebrow, preparing to say something snarky, but when Keith turns around there’s two things in his hands and Lance recognizes them with a shuddering drop in his stomach.

“This alright?” Keith says, a little too brightly.

“This wasn’t what I thought you meant when you said training,” Lance says, for lack of anything else, because those are the fucking mind-meld headpieces and Lance had never liked the mind-meld training, had always found it uncomfortably intimate even when it’s the team, and this is -

“Not alright then?” Keith asks, more seriously this time.

Lance’s mouth is dry, his heart in his throat. “If you wanted to get in my head-hole so badly, all you needed to do was ask,” he says, but his voice is a little choked and the joke falls flat.

Keith’s face is carefully expressionless. He wiggles the mind-meld headpiece at him and Lance reaches for it wordlessly, unthinkingly.

“Feel free to leave if you’re scared,” he teases, but the thing is Lance _is_ scared. Terrified even.

It’s such shit. Lance is a Voltron paladin. He’s one of five people in the universe that can _save_ the universe. It’s unfair that something like this is what breaks him out into a cold sweat.

“Where did you even get these?” He asks.

“Coran,” Keith says and offers no more explanation. “Did you want to sit somewhere in particular?”

Lance looks faintly down at the floor. He doesn’t really see why this would go any better six inches to the left than it would exactly where he stands. “This is fine,” he says, which is a total lie because _nothing_ is fine. “But, hey, why the mind-meld training anyway, we all suck at it. Why don’t we just beat each other to hell for a while? That always cheers you up.”

Keith sits down, folding his legs elegantly beneath him and looking disgustingly comfortable considering how Lance feels like he might just piss himself any moment now.

“No,” Keith says. “It’s got to be this.”

The looks he gives Lance is heavy and significant. The room is dimmer than the team normally has it, and Keith’s eyelashes are casting spiderweb shadows on his cheekbones.

 _Oh god_ , Lance thinks, and yeah, there’s the hysteria he’s been waiting on.

There’s no way Keith is this dense. He knows exactly what he’s doing. This isn’t about training.

Lance sinks to the floor like he’s got a weight tied to his back pulling him the whole way down. He’s closer to Keith than he is to the others when they all do this, sitting in their sprawling circle. They’re an inch or two off knocking knees.

Keith’s eyes flick over him, searching. Lance can imagine how he looks; sweat on his brow, hair a mess, skin pale. A look in his eyes like he’s walking to his death. His fingers are shaking around the headpiece.

Honestly, Keith doesn’t even need to see into his mind at this point to know what’s going on in Lance’s head. His poker face has never been very good.

“Okay?” Keith asks.

 _No_ , Lance thinks, _there is only one way this is going to end and it’s not pleasantly._

He offers Keith is a grin. “Let’s get this freak show rolling.”

Lance puts the headpiece on, fingers fumbling along the nooks that settle behind his ears to find the sensor that turns it on. His hands slide shaking and sweaty along the metal. He doesn’t remember it being this hard last time.

Warm fingers touch his and Lance jerks back with a shock.

Keith gives him an amused look, leaning in so his face is right up in front of Lance. “Calm down, will you?”

Lance swallow. “I can do this myself.”

Keith’s hand skims through his hair before finding the sensor at the back and flicking a finger across it. “Apparently not,” he says dryly, and Lance expects him to back off now, but he doesn’t, hands settling at the back of Lance’s neck.

He can feel the dryness of his palms, the heat in his skin. It’s startling intimate, and they’re not even sharing thoughts yet.

“Breathe, Lance,” Keith says, a touch too knowingly.

“I’m _trying_ ,” Lance says, and he means to add something snarky, like, _it’s hard when you’re stealing all my air_ or _it’d be easier with personal space, dude,_ but nothing comes out. It takes him a moment to realize it’s because there’s no _breath_ for it.

“Lance,” Keith says, and Lance gives him a positively filthy look before forcing himself to calm down before he hyperventilates.  

It’s unfair, he thinks, that Keith knows how much this is fucking him up and yet he gets to sit there all perfectly calm and pretend he doesn’t.

Lance could say _no_ though, get up and leave. Keith wouldn’t stop him.

And then the next time Lance lets something slip over the Voltron bond they’ll just wind up right back at the start of this whole train wreck.

 _To hell with it_ , Lance thinks. _If this is how Keith wants to do this, fine_.

“I’m fine,” Lance says. “I’m - let’s get this going, okay?”

Keith studies him for a second, makes sure Lance truly has his breath back, and then he nods once and leans away, hands falling from Lance’s neck. His skin feels cold without it.

“Okay,” Keith says, and he reaches up and turns his own headpiece on.

It’s like a kick to the gut. The connection of the mind-meld is nothing like the lions. Where there it’s as natural as the next heartbeat in Lance’s chest, an organic to and fro between his mind and the others, this is _not_.

It’s not violent, exactly, but Lance _feels_ his mind being gently maneuverer open, feels the foreign touch of Keith brushing tentatively along the edges of his conscience. He’s so very aware of himself, of Keith, of everything.

His fear is a palpable third person between them.

 _Calm down_ , says a voice that is not Lance’s own and he shivers, feels it in his body as he does in his mind.

It’s - it’s so much more intense than Lance thought it would be. Without the others here, without a clear purpose, it’s just two people and far too many thoughts and it’s so easy to lose his grip on his secrets, let everything spill out like an oil slick.

He can’t breathe, he can’t do this, he’s panicking, floundering, he can’t hide here, there’s nothing to hide behind, and he tries, _fuck_ does he try, he thinks about Voltron, about the lions, about how it feels to have Keith’s back against his, them against the world and all the violence it would do to them.

Lance clings to ‘training’ like it’s a prayer.

 _Lance_ , Keith says, and they’re not touching out in the real world, the space that Lance is quickly forgetting exists beyond this star-spark darkness, but Keith reaches out to him, brushes his fingers along the parts inside of Lance that are cramping and sore from hiding.

 _No_ , Lance thinks, and the flare of Keith’s irritation is blinding bright like this.

At some point it had stopped being about Keith not knowing and started being about _Lance_ not being able to live with Keith knowing. Distant years of crushing on somebody very out of your league will do that to a guy.

Keith catches at that thought, _pulls_ at it, and Lance unspools like thread.

 _Will you stop being stubborn for two seconds_ , Keith says and his exasperation feels far too soft and quiet and _fond_ like this, _and come and see._

 _See what?_ Lance thinks, and he’d meant it without direction or purpose but no thought is without audience here and Keith says _come and see_.

Lance lets Keith draw him in, away from Lance’s secrets and towards his own.

Because hadn’t this whole thing been about Keith seeing _his_ secrets, and if not that, then _what_?

 _Come see_ , Keith says, again, exasperated and annoyed in equal measure.

 _You’re like a broken record_ , Lance thinks, but he _goes_.

The place Keith takes him to is a memory more than it is words. Faltering and staticy with age, but clear coloured for all that the sound is muted.

It’s the academy, the first class they’d shared, and Lance shocks a little at that, that Keith even remembers. He watches himself as he sits down, two rows in front of Keith and already opening his mouth to hit on the girl next to him.

Lance doesn’t even remember this, but Keith’s eyes watch him and he feels a curiosity, a pin-sharp interest, that does not belong to him.

 _Keith_ , Lance thinks, _what_  -

 _This way_ , Keith says, and they spiral somewhere else.

This time they’re arguing, and Lance _does_ remember this. Their first big fight, in the middle of class, arguing about something dumb and unimportant. He remembers the hot flush in his cheeks, wanting to keep Keith’s attention, and despairing at the way Keith barely seemed interested in anything coming out of his mouth.

From Keith’s side though, he feels amusement now, a little patronizing, true, but _there_.

Keith’s gaze sticks at his mouth as Lance blusters and argues and absently Keith thinks _huh_ and the interest is a spark of hot and easy warmth this time.

 _But you didn’t even remember me_ , Lance thinks, a little stupidly, unable to work past the _huh_ that still echoes off from Keith’s memory, the less than platonic catch of his lips in Keith’s mind. _The first time we met, you didn’t even remember me_.

 _Come on,_ Keith thinks, and they're off again, Keith spinning him through a timeline that blurs together, flickers of remembered emotions, catches of images, words, absent thoughts.

In the real world they must be sitting quietly together, knee to knee, while the thoughts of it all play out on the little mental screens between them, but here it’s all consuming, Lance living through Keith’s memories as Keith.

It is;

_On Keith’s bike, fleeing from their own professors, and distinctly aware of Lance’s hands curling at his shoulders -_

_Clinging to the chair as Lance launches the blue lion into space, and fuck, when did the too-loud kid from his class learn to pilot as beautifully as this -_

_Lance laughing, head back and mouth open, and wow -_

_Back to back on Balmera, trying to get the seed of tentative trust between them to flower -_

_Growing to like Lance as more than a pretty face and a wistful idea -_

_Lance grinning up at him like a fucking moron as Keith holds him steady in his arms and “We make a hell of a team” -_

_The battle from only a week ago, and Lance’s conviction slamming into him like a tidal wave, and Keith’s mind is so scrambled he can barely tell his emotions apart from Lances’, except that there had been so much, and he’d known that whatever was between them was so big it was almost terrifying, but this, feeling it like this, how is Keith ever going to find room in his chest for breath again -_

_Lance in the healing pod, face slack, everything blue, and Keith sitting cross-legged in front of him, waiting because Lance would wake up he fucking would because if he didn’t then Keith was going to kill him -_

_Lance awake now, Keith’s forehead on his collar, hands fisted in his shirt and drowning in irritated frustration because here Keith was trying to tell him_ everything _and Lance was as dense as a fucking brick wall and how the fuck did he ever expect Keith to be able to_ say _anything when Lance had never even thought of opening his damn mouth -_

_His hands in Lance’s hair, just now, and Lance so fucking terrified and if he would just let Keith fucking do this than they’d never need to worry about this, talk about this, ever again, just trust me, trust me, trust me -_

Lance pulls back so violently that he actually breaks the concentration of the mind-meld, rockets back to his body and away from the comforting hold of Keith’s mind. He staggers upright, pulls at the headpiece with fingers that fumble, and manages to yank it off and throw it clear across the room just as Keith is getting to his feet.

The headpiece hits the wall hard enough that it powers off, and without somebody to meld with the image projected before Keith - and it’s Lance, of course it’s Lance, and he wonders hysterically what other images had played out between them during this - shatters.

“Lance,” Keith says, voice tense, reaching for him like he plans to steady him, and Lance takes a step back on reflex.

“You can’t - there’s no way…” Lance swallows so hard it hurts. His mind is still confused, not just by the lingering remnants of Keith’s mind in the corners of his own, but by the abruptness of the break. It’s too much. _Too much_.

“ _Lance_ ,” Keith says, and he manages to catch Lance by the shoulders this time, hold him there and look into his eyes. “Lance, just -.”

“If you tell me to breathe I’m going to punch you,” Lance promises even as his hands catch on the front of Keith’s jacket to keep himself stable.

Keith’s face blinks from shock to a small, slightly strained smile. “I was actually going to say _calm down_.”

“That’s not any better,” Lance hisses. “And you being all responsible is just _weirding me the fuck out_.”

“I wouldn’t need to be responsible if you would stop freaking out every time I even try to talk to you,” Keith says, and this time his voice is raised too, and good, Lance can deal with that, the pair of them at each other’s throat is old hat by now.

“This, Keith?” He says, gesturing between them, Keith’s headpiece still on and Lance’s halfway across the room. “This wasn’t _talking_.”

“ _This_ was the only way I could think of to get you to actually listen to me without freaking out and running out of the damn room!” Keith shouts, and he actually shakes Lance by the shoulders. “You’re making this - this doesn’t have to be this difficult!”

“Of course it has to be this difficult! Do you have any idea -.” Lance cuts off, takes a deep breath.

“Yes, Lance, I sort of do,” Keith snaps, but his voice is down again, and the grip on Lance’s shoulders isn’t painful anymore. “You were just in my damn head - I just _let_ you in my head. Why is this so hard for you to understand?”

The truth is a thousand and one things here.

Because Lance has been in love with Keith longer than he’s known half the people on this ship.

Because Keith was the top pilot in their program and could do things Lance and half the planet could only dream about.

Because Lance had spent his formative years coming to terms with the fact Keith wouldn’t ever really know he existed, and then the last few months coming to terms with the fact that Keith _would_ know he existed but wouldn’t be thanking anybody for it.

Because of all these things and because _Lance doesn’t fucking know_.

It’s a little bit of an adjustment, he thinks, to get taken through the rollercoaster that’s Keith’s mind, Keith’s thoughts about him, and expect Lance to come out at the end on two feet.

“You didn’t even get the tour of _my_ head-hole,” he says instead, because joking will always be his best defense against the unexpected.

Keith huffs out a sigh and offers him a weak grin. “I didn’t really need it. You think _really loud_.”

 _Huh_.

They go silent for a minute, still holding on to each other, and now without the hysteria and the adrenaline Lance can’t help but be aware of what that could really mean now in light of - well, everything.

“If this is too much,” Keith says, quietly, hesitantly, “too _soon_ , we don’t have to - we don’t have to do anything about this. It can wait.”

 _Can it though?_ Lance thinks.

How long has it been waiting already? Longer than the week since Lance had put it out in the open, that’s for sure. It’s a lot of stuff that’s been in Lance’s head pretty much all of his adult life - had been in Keith’s head all of his adult life.

God, romance shouldn’t be this fucking intimidating.

“It’s - it’s not too soon,” Lance says.

Keith’s mouth quirks. “But it’s too much?”

“And it isn’t for you?” Lance counters.

Keith grimaces. “I don’t really think it was ever going to be anything _but_ too much,” he says, which yeah, Lance really should have figured out on his own.

Lance’s fingers have stopped shaking by now, but they ache in the knuckles from the tension of it all. He curls them tighter in Keith’s jacket, pulls him in so that Lance can rest his head at his shoulder, in the dip of his neck.

It’s nice. He can understand why Keith got so much out of it.

 _Keith likes me,_ he thinks, to test the thought in the space of his own head. _Keith likes me the way I like him._

It still doesn’t feel real. Lance is almost convinced that it’s not, except he’s always been able to tell the way Keith feels in his dreams apart from the way he feels in reality.

_Keith likes me, and I like him, and the team isn’t going to break up over this._

Lance wrinkles his nose.

_Jesus fucking Christ it’s like I’m the lead in a shitty romcom._

“We are really bad at this,” he says aloud and Keith snorts and finally leans forward to drop his chin on the top of Lance’s head.

“You’re bad at everything,” Keith says in reply, and what it lacks in heat it makes up for in warmth, “so I’m not really that surprised.”

Lance pinches Keith’s side for that, and Keith swats him away, swearing, but Lance clings to him and Keith doesn’t seem really all that inclined to push him away. It’s the strangest hug he’s ever been a part of.

“Do we need to - you know, talk about this?” He asks. “Say it all out loud?”

“God no,” Keith says quickly, sounding genuinely horrified at the prospect.

“Oh, thank god,” Lance sighs, and the panic is still there, a low thrum at the back of his mind, _Keith likes you the same way you like him, Keith likes you the same way you like him,_ but Lance thinks he can get use to it.

Certainly it’s better than _you’re in love with Keith and he’ll probably never feel anything more than grudging tolerance for you._

As far as personal mottos go, Lance thinks it’s about time that one got retired.

“Are you done freaking out now?” Keith asks cautiously.

Lance grins tiredly into his collarbone and, before he can think better of it, kisses the skin there. Keith’s breath catches a little. It’s very flattering.

“Not really, but I just learnt that my years old unrequited crush mightn’t have been so unrequited after all, so you might have to give me some time on that one.”

“If you weren’t as observant as a brick wall you might have noticed sooner,” Keith says dryly.

Lance pulls back so that he can squint accusingly at him. “Don’t you even start, okay. Like you had any clue before all this shit either.”

“I would have noticed eventually,” Keith protests. “Before you did, for sure. Besides, I had to translate a panicked death thought and I managed to get the picture – you got a full tour of my brain and still couldn’t wrap your damn head around it.”

Lance decides the appropriate come back here isn’t probably _because I’ll always love you more than you love me_ because it’s really much too early in their relationship – _their relationship,_ fuck, is that what this is – to have a fight like that.

Instead he says primly, “I’m still taller than you.”

“An _inch_!” Keith says, heated now. “One inch – and it doesn’t even matter anyway.”

“It’s funny how these things only ever cease to matter when you’re the one losing,” Lance informs him as seriously as he can manage.

“Not everything is a competition,” Keith says in return, and then, “but if it were, then I won the confession one.”

“I can’t believe we just had a mind-meld confession and we’re arguing over who wins.”

Keith frowns at him, puzzled. “What else would we do?”

Lance thinks about that and comes up empty. “Yeah, okay.” He says, and then, before he loses his nerve, he gets a hand around the back of Keith’s neck and leans in to kiss him.

“Huh,” Keith says when Lance pulls back, and it’s so very much like the sound he’d made inside his damn head the first time he’d caught himself looking at Lance’s lips that Lance can’t help the hopelessly pleased smile it brings out of him.

“So,” he says, “I’m not sure about you, but this has been one of the most exhausting nights of my life.”

“Outside a battlefield anyway,” Keith agrees. “God, emotions are terrible, why does anybody ever have them?”

“It’s late,” Lance says, because he thinks it probably is even though it’s really hard to tell in space, “and I sort of miss my bed.”

“Oh,” Keith says.

Lance tries to be nonchalant as he says, “but if you’re not too worried about comfort, we could probably try to fit two.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Keith says again, this time more interested and a little red at the ears.

(and Lance means it to sleep, he honestly does, because he wasn’t kidding about this mind-meld thing being absolutely draining, but he’s only human and he doesn’t think Keith would really hold a few wandering hands against him at this point.)

Lance steps back, a hand sliding down Keith’s arm so that their fingertips brush before he pulls away. He smiles at him, one eyebrow up. “Coming, then?”

“I’m not going to hold your hand on the way there,” Keith says as he follows after him.

“Nobody asked you to,” Lance replies snidely.

They really don’t hold hands and the bed _is_ too small and they’re both too tired for anything more than tentative fingertips crawling up beneath shirts and curling up so that their foreheads press, but it’s as exhilarating as it is sleepily perfect.

The half started letter is still beneath Lance’s pillow, and he hears it crinkle as Keith squirms around in his sleep, and he can’t help but imagine the look on his mother’s face if he were to tell her about Keith, yeah, _that_ Keith, the one he was always calling her to complain about after class.

He’s written her a hundred letters about space and aliens and telepathy and all the things in between, and it’s funny how this right here is the one he’d always had the most trouble explaining.

In the morning he’ll try again, Keith still curled up quiet underneath the sheets, and he’ll start it:

_Hey Mom, so when I get home there’s this guy I can’t wait to introduce you to…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was so painful to write. i had more ideas than my brain knew how to translate to paper and it just refused to end. it wound up longer than the last two combined, but there was really no place to cut it without ruining flow. 
> 
> i really hope this wasn't a disappointment and I'm so pleased by all the comments I've gotten, this fandom is so great and i'm so pleased to have contibuted to it. 
> 
> you can find me as glenflower over on tumblr!


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